About

Our Names:Learning To Surf Publishing: We chose this name for a number of reasons; the two most relevant being as follows:
– Learning to surf in the sea or on the net (or even in space) is always a daunting prospect. Thereafter, it is a steep and dangerous learning curve which continues for years before the finer points are mastered. As this is our first foray into self-publishing, we wanted our enthusiasm and inexperience to be obvious.
– Learning to surf or any other activity/hobby that takes you out of your comfort zone is something that we embrace as a self-evolutionary tool. Writing and publishing, whilst seeming rather sedentary in comparison to most other pursuits, is just as terrifying and rewarding.

Imnogr8yt: Let’s state for the record that we are all for Great White Pointer Sharks – the bigger, the better. We like that they are out there, and like most sea-lovers and beach-lovers, appreciate that we are entering their territory while in the water. So we get very annoyed when any dorsal-finned thing is immediately labelled ‘a great white’ by ignorant observers and sensation-seeking media. We endeavor to avoid Mr Benchley’s and Mr Spielberg’s horrendous mistake and thus help save, instead of drive to extinction, any precious creatures – and by extension, ideas/cultures/thoughts.
And, of course, we are still little fry, and hope we can grow into some big healthy tuna someday…

Why we write: You’ll get four different reasons on this one but the biggest and two most important are: we love stories and storytelling – old stories, new stories, weird stories, simple stories… Just, you know, stories. You’ll also be told that we love writing and that we hate writing, but we are all committed to writing and telling stories. When it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood.
We write because we must – for ourselves. We hope that we find readers who are equally committed to reading – and stories. It’s the stories that matter because we learn from them. If there were no stories, there would be no hope; no dreams; no empathy; no sense of being a part of this exist. We are all but flesh and blood stories.

Our Experiment: After countless hours of carefully reading the guidelines and requirements of the few traditional (and growing indie) publishing houses and agents, then spending even more countless hours of writing cover letters, synopses and the like, we realised that we weren’t getting much writing done. And as more and more publishers/agents required you to already have a following or online presence (something we did not previously have), it occurred to us that that was one of the main reasons we required them. So creating our own online presence effectively negated half of the reason for having an agent or marketing stipend from a publisher. So, we went the Smashwords.com route once we had decided that harvesting impersonal rejection letters, which often claimed that there was no market for our work, was nowhere near as much fun as actual writing.
We’ve never looked back. Our readers may be small in number, but they are growing. We would like to thank them (and you) for giving us their precious time and allowing our stories to live for a short time in their imaginations. We’d also like to thank Smashwords for making life so exciting and rewarding for first-time and indie self-publishers! We love your distribution and your reports!

Our Authors:

Leenna Naidoo
Anushka Haakonson
NVaughn7

Find us on:
Smashwords
and
Twitter (learningtosurfp)

Contact us:
Write to imnogr8yt@gmail.com or say hi on Twitter.
We aren’t always on-line so consider us as having a rather delayed phone line or dodgy internet connection. We’ll reply as soon as the Gods of Tech allow.